A man is trying to cross the sea to his war-ravaged land. His would-be rescuer is sceptical. “Without people,” he says about the place the man calls home, “it’s just bricks and rocks.” Except in Anna Jordan’s four-hander for Frantic Assembly, home is very much in the bricks and rocks and there’s no “just” about it. In a play that unfolds across time to tell three parallel wartime stories, home is in the sand and the sea, the cliffs and the amusement arcades, the streets and the houses of Scarborough. The people, by contrast, variously misunderstand or reject the returning soldiers; that’s if they’re still there at all.

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Structured like a string quartet, with its solos, duets and ensemble pieces, The Unreturning takes us to 1918, when an army private takes leave after the loss of his section in the trenches; to 2013, when a squaddie is sent back to face justice for attacking an Iraqi civilian; and to 2026, when an exile from civil war in the UK flees a squalid Norwegian refugee camp in the hope of finding his brother. In each case, both the men and the home they left behind have changed. Scarborough is where they belong and where they no longer fit in.

The more Jordan develops the stories, the more she treads on familiar ground. The Christmas Day armistice on the western front, the soldier’s incapacity to describe the horror of battle, the emotional repression of the average bloke and the violent outbursts brought on by PTSD are standard-issue themes. It’s all sensitively and poetically done, however, and Jordan’s juxtaposition of the tales, the sense of repeated behaviour across the generations, the feeling of men continually sacrificing themselves for the greater social good, only adds to the poignancy.

All at sea … The Unreturning by Anna Jordan. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian

Above all, in Neil Bettles’ production, it is consummately done. Performed with heart and focus by Joe Layton, Jared Garfield, Jonnie Riordan and Kieton Saunders-Browne, it is staged on a revolving shipping-container set by Andrzej Goulding, so malleable it feels like a character in itself. With Pete Malkin’s forceful electro-orchestral score and Zoe Spurr’s high-precision lighting, it is fluid, brooding and intense.